Revisiting the Literature in my own mother-tongue Malayalam

When I was a teenager, I was kind of an amphibian voraciously reading (but not always retaining the details) of good books in English as well as Malayalam, my mother-tongue. I could even read in my national language Hindi though nowadays I find it hard to decipher even the alphabets (which I have tried by reading the film news in Navbharat Times).

Regarding Malayalam classics, my tastes more or less revolved around these major writers in Malayalam- Madhavikutty, T. Padmanabhan, MT Vasudevan Nair and Vaikkom Muhammed Basheer. These were the writers whom I loved to read again and again. My mother always brought new books by these writers to replenish my reading list from her office library.

We were a curious mother-daughter duo for in most serious aspects of life and we have always differed from other in principles or just for the difference of it; but regarding books, she is the one who has guided my reading tastes in Malayalam literature. Now, she has turned religious and reads only the Bible and prayer-books but there used to be a time when I could listen spell-bound to the stories that she recounted from the books she has read.

Well, back to my love of Malayalam literature. Though I have read only a few Malayalam books these ten years since I became an English literature student- a few like Khasakinte Ithihasam, Short stories of Madhavikutty, Jeevithanizhalpadukal and Balyakalasakhi by Vaikkom Muhammed Basheer and MT Vasudevan Nair's Randamoozham- the fact that recently I was teaching in a place where Malayalam literature was taught for MA as well brought to light that love of good literature written in Malayalam.

What followed was a gobbling up of Complete works of Madhavikutty now followed by Complete Works of Vaikkom Muhammed Basheer as well as a few works of MT Vasudevan Nair. Greatly amazed by Basheer and well as by MT, I feel like a curious child who is still in the process of joining together a jigsaw puzzle.That means that you, my dear readers will soon be bombarded with reviews and stories of the books I have encountered in Malayalam literature soon! 

Shashi Deshpande

Self-revelation is a cruel process. The real picture, the real you never emerges. Looking for it is as bewildering as trying to know how you really look. Ten different mirrors show you ten different faces. SHASHI DESHPANDE

It's unfortunate that I got introduced to the works of Shashi Deshpande through her novel, The Dark Holds No Terrors. It was part of my BA Syllabus and somehow I disliked this classic of Indian feminism that openly attacked the patriarchal values of repressing women.

Now almost a decade later, I read her novels Moving On and Roots and Shadows. To my own amazement, the books were well-written and very readable though her books follow a particular structure and form just like all the thrillers of Dan Brown are made of the same mould.

Somehow I felt betrayed as a literary student when I realised that what I studied as a student was one of her earlier works written in 1980, while Roots and Shadows belonged to 1983 and Moving On was published in 2004.

Though so late, I have become a fan of her writing and is happy to find that can keep the suspense of the story intact till the end while writing in a simple yet precise style.Written mostly in the stream-of-consciousness technique, the novels reveal the inner lives of women who try to liberate themselves from the shackles of family and society.

An open mind

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